It is interesting to note that “The Pan,” as one would expect, was staged during the summer months though Buffalo is a city infamous for brutal winters, with some describing its summers as “brief thaws between interminable ice ages.” In 1901, Buffalo’s current Big Orbit Gallery was an ice factory and warehouse. Ice is also part of the story of “The Pan.” It was supposed that Esquimaux, the Inuit display, required “a natural setting of arctic temperatures,” no small undertaking before modern refrigeration. Mr. Wanta Cinchee’s company donated huge ice blocks that promised to make “eternal winter possible in Buffalo.” Even the Electric Tower, “The Pan’s” focal point and signature structure (evolved from a proposal by Chicago concessionaire David R. Proctor who wanted to outdo the1889 Paris Exposition’s Eiffel Tower) had plans for ice. Proctor envisioned an observation tower 1,152’ high, featuring 33 elevators that would whisk intrepid sightseers to seven different observation decks. The landing at 675’ in the air was to feature an ice skating rink! The endless ice this rink would have needed to remain viable in the summer heat substantiates the words of Ihara Saikaku: “if making money is a slow process, losing it is quickly done…like ice beneath the sun’s rays – to such poverty did he fall…his fortune melted like water.” Grandiose and impractical, the proposal was sensibly scaled down; yet, Proctor’s pipe dream of an “ice skating rink in the sky” is precisely what comes to mind in looking at Johnson’s installation.

There is a cold aesthetic at work here. Democracy on Ice is composed of two discrete but interrelated components, one in the main gallery and the other in a small side gallery. The main gallery installation is a 38’ by 14’ floe of pack ice; its separated slabs, when viewed together, form a figure skating rink.